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Public Outreach ~ Community Action ~ Creative Solutions

With a deep connection to the region, Mountain West Strategies combines local and state-level knowledge of the lands and resources, politics, and stakeholders with a strong understanding of conservation and progressive issues.

News

The Delta Board of County Commissioners has taken an official position on the proposed Thompson Divide gas lease exchange which includes federal gas lease properties in Delta County. County administrator Robbie LeValley notes the exchange process is likely to be a long one involving levels of government right up to the U.S Congress which will more »

This past May the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance joined with partners and friends including Slow Food Western Slope, the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, and the Valley Organic Growers Association to bring a sampling of top quality Colorado-sourced food and drink to Denver, with a message.

If you care about food you need to care about how oil and gas is getting developed in Colorado.

“It’s very important that oil and gas development happen responsibly,” said Jim Brett of Slow Food Western Slope. “It doesn’t need to happen everywhere, we must be careful about our food sources.”

Business friends and partners included The Kitchen-Denver Restaurant (“Community through Food”) which hosted the event, and Peak Spirits Distillery at Jack Rabbit Hill Farm, Big B’s Juices & Hard Ciders, Alfred Eames Cellars, Stone Cottage Cellars, and Thistle Whistle Farm, who donated their time and top quality skills and product.

Hey, Colorado – how about a climate challenge? Paonia event focuses on solutions for western Colorado Staff Report FRISCO — Everybody is talking about climate change, but that palaver doesn’t always translate into action. Not so in Paonia, though, where community and climate activists will gather May 1-3 for the Western Colorado Climate Challenge & Solar more »

Step Right Up and WIN! This Boom will never Bust, Baby! Colorado is about to lose thousands of jobs, again, as the latest boom and its promise of vast riches crashes into the reality of a volatile commodity market. Again. Like in the last bust in 2008 that hit the western Colorado gas fields, it was just months more »

Features

Sure we have some of the best winter recreation in the world, and Color Sunday drives and hunting season make fall the busiest part of the season for many Colorado communities. But there is something about a Rocky Mountain summer that is hard to beat.

The wet May and early, heavy monsoons much of the state has been getting since, have brought forth wildflowers that many say are the most outrageous, rainbow array seen in years. Truly a display of Colorado pride.

All the moisture, and warm weather between, has also led to another fact in this year’s backcountry – there are lots of mosquitoes out there. And mosquitoes are not just an annoyance, but bring public health warnings. In Colorado, for the West Nile Virus, which is likely to become an even larger problem under climate change.

Invasive species aren’t just species — they can also be pathogens. Such is the case with the West Nile virus.

Like a number of communities in Colorado, the valley where I live has been engaged in an effort to constrain oil and gas development to keep it out of our water supplies, our favorite recreational areas, our towns, farms and communities.

This effort has been met with mixed success. We banded together to stop an ill-advised Bureau of Land Management lease sale, deferring it twice. We compelled the BLM to consider a community-based alternative as it revises its very stale 1980s era land use plan, and local conservation groups have successfully challenged some other projects—sending them back for a time to the drawing board.

But more than 80,000 acres of public lands are leased in the upper reaches of the North Fork, many private lands are already under industry control, and Texas billionaires with privately held gas companies have their sights on acquiring more.